Beware Finland

Dana Goldstein draws out attention to this somewhat absurd Ed in '08 ad warning that unless we heed their message of reform, Finland will bury us:

Among other things, as Dana says, this kid down at the yacht club is probably going to do fine: "the American children most in need of school reform aren't white kids standing on docks (like the boy in this commercial), but rather the rural and inner-city children whose schools have the fewest resources and who tend to be taught by the least qualified teachers." But beyond that, Finland is a model for skeptics of the education reform agenda, not its proponents -- its a country whose stellar educational results are founded on a comprehensive social democratic framework that extends far beyond the school system. This is what the "Broader, Bolder" people are supposed to be talking about not the school reformers.

Comments

I think the commercial raises a valid point in an ineffective way. What sort of solutions is Ed in 08 advocating for?

Posted by Roman | July 22, 2008 5:58 PM

I don't know if you can base any policy on how it plays out in Finland. It's a rather unique place after all -- what other country could manage to arrange things such that Nazi German soldiers would be fighting under the command of Jewish officers?

Posted by DAS | July 22, 2008 6:13 PM

Well, considering the tragedy that America hasn't held the America's Cup since 1995, maybe young master Astorbilt there needs some math and physics tutoring to help develop his future naval engineering and navigational skills.

Posted by Tom | July 22, 2008 6:21 PM

Yeah, the conclusion is pretty clear. Flag after flag is of a country with a more "social democratic" model of education than the US. France, Canada, etc.

Posted by Andrew Edwards | July 22, 2008 6:28 PM

"Well, considering the tragedy that America hasn't held the America's Cup since 1995"

The real tragedy is that New Zealand doesn't have the cup. The Swiss may have won the last two, but they did it with Kiwi crews. New Zealand just doesn't have the money to keep their sailors. Another tragedy is that Firefox can't accept 'New Zealand' as a properly spelled word. Kind of like 'Obama'.

Posted by fostert | July 22, 2008 6:34 PM

Sailer pointing out Finland's high homogeneity in 5, 4, 3...

Posted by Klug | July 22, 2008 6:46 PM

lol@ "fewest resources"...sorry, but there are numerous examples of public schools with resources which dwarf those of private schools within the same geographic area getting taken to the academic standards woodshed by these private schools.

And as for the "least qualified" argument, maybe we could get rid of those teachers if the school systems were allowed to fire anyone.

The problem isn't with the money, or not being able to attract the best teachers, its systemic

Posted by ike | July 22, 2008 6:59 PM

Dana Goldstein frequently rivals former TAPPED contributor Kate Sheppard for stupidity, but she combines it with vile bigotry, such as this from the link: Because blond-haired, blue-eyed, white males might lose out on a job to a Finnish dude. Of course, that's not racist or bigoted or anything, since she's a "liberal".

Posted by TLB present ObamaTestDotCom | July 22, 2008 7:06 PM

The Swiss may have won the last two, but they did it with Kiwi crews.

Of course, no one has ever beaten the Swiss Navy.

Posted by Tom | July 22, 2008 7:08 PM

"Her" schools? Seriously?

Posted by Matt B | July 22, 2008 7:32 PM

"the American children most in need of school reform aren't white kids standing on docks (like the boy in this commercial), but rather the rural and inner-city children whose schools have the fewest resources and who tend to be taught by the least qualified teachers."

Hey, how do you know the kid in the picture isn't a rural kid? I bet he is. Why else would he be standing out there raising all those flags? That's probably his job - he has to work at a minimum wage job as a flag raiser to pay for books since his school can't afford any.

Posted by Peter Bautista | July 22, 2008 10:33 PM

ike is right: I live in DC, where we lead the nation in dollars per student funding. We also have basically the worst schools anywhere. a good rule of thumb in education debates is this: when you hear someone suggest that the problem with the schools in (the city, the county, the state, the district, the country) is inadequate funding, odds are you're listening to someone ensconced in a protective cocoon of blissful ignorance.

My brother taught in one of DC's shitty, shitty schools for several years, and there was a social studies teacher there who used to show up every two weeks on pay day, collect his check, and then disappear because he had to tend to a sick relative. This went on semester after semester, and it's just one example of how you can spend endless dollars on education with no results whatever.

Posted by the russert rainbow | July 22, 2008 10:44 PM

Russert Rainbow -

I'm not sure a teacher who show's up once every two weeks counts as a well-resourced school...

Obviously, $ and resources aren't necessarily the same thing. You need money to pay for resources, but it matters what the money's is being spent on. On the other hand, if DC WERE to spend it's money properly, I doubt it would save any money.

To put it another way - spending lots of money won't guarantee adequate resources, but it's damn hard to have adequate resources without spending a good bit of money.

Posted by Peter Bautista | July 22, 2008 10:49 PM

"lol@ "fewest resources"...sorry, but there are numerous examples of public schools with resources which dwarf those of private schools within the same geographic area getting taken to the academic standards woodshed by these private schools."

Well, some kind of documentation/link/vague but trackable reference would be nice, but anyway, one important thing is to carefully define resources. Let's say (all figures made up) private school B gets only half the dollars of public school A. At the same time, the average B-school family invests the equivalent of $10,000 dollars/year (above and beyond tuition) of mainstream fiscal, social, and cultural capital in their kid's education - everything from educational toys to bedtime stories to modeling middle-class strategies of problem solving, language use, etc. (see for example Lareau's Unequal Childhoods) to extra supplies. Meanwhile, the average A family is able to invest $250 of mainstream capital/year. Their children are also significantly more likely to be exposed to even small amounts of lead, with resulting cognitive and behavioral problems that are the equivalent of -$600/year/child . . .

You get the picture. Of course, not all instances will have such a wide gap. Including parochial schools and various voucher/charter programs also narrows it some. Such schools are going to have a high percentage of families who explicitly value whatever the school claims to provide and are together enough to take advantage of these opportunities. They're are also relying on public schools to take care of certain social goods - for example, the idea that everybody has the right to an education - which allows them to much more freely expel problem students, in some areas not put (relatively) extensive resources into special ed services, etc.

In still other cases, schools are otherwise fairly (though not entirely) comparable. Here one apparent factor often seems to be the school-level equivalent of the 'hero teacher' - involving extremely high morale and inspiration as well as extremely hard work, with questions about repeatability and sustainability (not necessarily unanswerable questions, certainly - see KIPP, but again, we're looking at what ends up being resources that dwarf other schools)

One might quibble about details of any of these scenarios - my basic point is that we have to go beyond a view of resources and funding that treats schools and communities as identical widgets or something [please stop calling out, Mr. Sailer].

"And as for the "least qualified" argument, maybe we could get rid of those teachers if the school systems were allowed to fire anyone."

Setting aside the 'schools aren't allowed to fire anyone' myth, one of the issues is that teaching in 'the school systems' (in common discourse, this refers mostly to poor urban majority-minority schools in troubled areas, although they're sometimes apparently imagined as having the funding of affluent middle+/professional suburban ones) is an extremely difficult and sometimes fairly dispiriting job with relatively little concrete reward (though it can have quite a few intangible ones). At (I should stress) an extreme, here in Philly over the last few years we've had issues of parents physically threatening or attacking teachers, and two widely publicized cases of teachers who were put in the hospital by students - one with a broken jaw, one with a broken neck. Thanks to , ah, suboptimal work environments, these schools are disproportionately staffed by 1) - in large quantity - new, inexperienced teachers (of varying quality otherwise), of which an obscene percentage will leave (the school, district, or profession) within 1-5 years, to be replaced by more new, inexperienced teachers, constant, damaging high turnover, 2) often extremely dedicated teachers who have hung on, and 3) worn out, burned out, or simply lackkluster teachers who are also hanging on because a) their prospects elsewhere are rather slim, and b) at least they're a body in the classroom with some sense of what's going on. (yes, oversimplified, and ideal types).

Posted by Dan S. | July 23, 2008 2:02 AM

"To put it another way - spending lots of money won't guarantee adequate resources, but it's damn hard to have adequate resources without spending a good bit of money."

Excellent, excellent point. Generally recognized in other domains - military spending is an easy example - but somehow forgotten once folks start talking about education . . .

Posted by Dan S. | July 23, 2008 2:15 AM

Generally speaking, white schoolkids in European social democracies score about the same as white schoolkids in Bushilter's laissez-faire America, just as northeast Asians score about as well in northeast Asia as in America (i.e., a little better than whites).

Finland may be the exception to this general pattern -- its PISA scores are very high. I don't know why.

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/thats-pretty-pathetic.html

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 23, 2008 2:23 AM

Well, in respose to the poster who mentions that "Public schools sometimes dwarf private schools" I'd like to rasie the following point:

I had the privilegve of attending both St. Anne's school for intellectually gifted students (yes, I live in NYC and yes, I mean THAT St. Anne's, the one that publishes the noted literary magazine they sell at Barne's and Noble) and John Dewey High school, a NYC public magnet school.
Dewey was pretty good, but not as good as St. Anne's. We had a great economics teacher name George Bader, who really engaged sutdents quite a bit. Otherwise, facilities were good, about what you'd find in a good community college. good library, good labs, good gym. NOthing compared to St. Anne's facility or staff.
St. Anne's featured Spike Lee's mom teaching african history, Collette Rossante (Who hosted a french chef show that competed with Julia Child on PBS) teaching french, and Dr. Helen Caldicott of the Union of Concerned Scientists teaching Biology. The theater departments theater trumped Brooklyn College's (they're considered one the three best drama programs in N. America, the other two being NYU and UCLA), and, well, you get the idea.

St. Anne's has a student body of 500, K-12, and an annual tuition of $35000 ( I was a scholarship kid), John Dewey has a student body of 3500, 9-12, and is free.
Just a little first hand experience for the thread, that's all.

Posted by Joshua Whalen | July 23, 2008 2:27 AM

I'm curious, what makes "principals aren't allowed to fire bad teachers" a myth? It seems pretty well-documented to me. Here's a summary:
http://www.slate.com/id/2195147/
I've also read numerous examples of teachers who were kicked out of the classroom in NYC schools but had to stay on the payroll, literally making $80k to do nothing, because they couldn't be fired. And as the child of two retired public school teachers, I've heard from plenty of teachers about how the union will always to go bat for the crappy teachers.

Posted by too many steves | July 23, 2008 3:13 AM

Finland's edducation system is indeed interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland

They've a version of vouchers (private schools get a grant equivalent to what a State school would get) and a rigid division into academic and vocational education systems from 15 onwards.

Also considered one of the best education systems in the world.

Posted by Tim Worstall | July 23, 2008 5:05 AM

I don't know why.

I'm sure you're working on a explanation right now that just happens to be based upon racial determinism.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 23, 2008 5:09 AM

but it's damn hard to have adequate resources without spending a good bit of money."

Can you please provide a citation to a person who has argued that it is possible to have adequate resources without spending a good bit of money?

I personally have argued that schools in the Western world on average already do have adequate amounts of money spent on them, and their current problems are due to other causes, but I have never argued that it is possible for a school to teach kids adequately without spending a good bit of money.

The reason I think that schools currently have ample money spent on them is that there's no evident correlation between student performance and I can't find any examples of a school's performance increasing dramatically if they merely got more funding. If there was some minimum cut-off that most schools were below we would see such a correlation. See for example the OECD Education at a Glance Report 2007 at http://www.oecd.org/document/30/0,3343,en_2649_39263238_39251550_1_1_1_1,00.html

I have never run across anyone who has argued that it is possible to run an effective school without resources. I strongly suspect you are attacking a strawman.

Posted by Tracy W | July 23, 2008 5:13 AM

"I have never run across anyone who has argued that it is possible to run an effective school without resources. I strongly suspect you are attacking a strawman."

Tracey W. - I respect your obvious concern with improving education, but - well, first off, of course, that's a little bit of a strawman itself. More to the point, though: as Peter points out, the 'just throwing money at the problem' does have a very, very real point, one I haven't always appreciated enough, which is that simply spending without any robust way to direct it efficiently isn't rarely going to work very well - see those stories about suitcases of cash & Iraqi reconstruction - (and of course, that per se isn't what people are generally arguing for). The problem is, too often in practice, in the public ideological arena, it becomes an argument against improving school funding in itself, as it is (rightly or wrongly - I of course think the latter) in your comment.

Now, that other problems are very important, and that it isn't merely funding - I'm certainly not going to argue; indeed, I completely agree (more specifically, they're often intertwined). But what you end up arguing is that lack of dramatic improvements with even with slightly better funding (and often little if any help with other issues) is in itself clear evidence that schools have significant - even ample funding, rather than, for example, extremely sub-par funding or simply inadequate funding dwarfed by other issues or consistently misdirected funding or . . .

There's also (at least at the level of words, if not necessarily ideas) another example of the 'all schools are alike' fallacy (not saying intentionally, of course). To say that " schools in the Western world on average already do have adequate amounts of money spent on them, and their current problems are due to other causes," sweeps an enormous amount of socioeconomic and political (sit down, Mr. Sailer!) difference under the rug of averages. Indeed (frantically typing faster and faster - whole getting to work on time thing . . .) at least one costing-out study (link later) has argued that some suburban PA public schools are in fact amply funded - in fact, overfunded - while many urban and rural public schools are underfunded (and again, one has to keep in mind that any idea of equitable funding has to keep in mind actual needs and extra-curricular resources, monetary and otherwise.

Posted by Dan S. | July 23, 2008 7:39 AM

Sailer pointing out Finland's high homogeneity in 5, 4, 3..

Canada is clearly less homogenous than the US (many immigrants plus Quebec) but there's a Canadian flag above the US flag in that ad too.

Posted by Andrew Edwards | July 23, 2008 8:20 AM

Yes, but that's because Canada is more w-, ah, 'wintery' than the USA.

Am I doing OK, Steve?

Posted by Barry | July 23, 2008 9:37 AM

There's a real coastal-elite beltway problem on the schools question, because among the places with really bad unionized schools are New York and Washington, which is where coastal political elites concentrate. So people can blame the teachers unions.

Elsewhere in the U.S. the situation is quite different, but beltway people don't know that. Non-union schools in the South are among the worst of all.

Some people don't like unions, some don't like taxes, some want prayer in schools (and no sex ed ot evolution), and some have plans to start for-profit schools, and these groups swamp the discussion of educational reform.

P.S. Swedes and Finns come to the U.S. to work as secretaries and the like, because they understand English grammar and know how to spell.

Posted by John Emerson | July 23, 2008 9:47 AM

I challenge anyone to walk into a DC school building and claim that we're "spending too much money." Their facilities and physical plant are atrocious. It may well be that the money is getting lost in a black hole, but when people say, "the schools need money spent on them," they're not joking.

Posted by Tyro | July 23, 2008 10:14 AM

I for one welcome our new Finnish overlords.

As long as they don't make me eat lipeäkala (lutefisk).

Posted by Steve LaBonne | July 23, 2008 10:16 AM

"Canada is clearly less homogenous than the US (many immigrants plus Quebec)"

Huh? Not in the ways that drive down school achievement test scores. Are you guys really that ignorant about how the world works?

That's a general problem with political correctness -- you tell yourself that, well, sure, I just spout nonsense in public because that's how I show I'm a virtuous, culturally superior person, but deep down I'm not a total rube. But, then you start falling for your own lies and turn out to be a sucker.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 23, 2008 10:32 AM

They've a version of vouchers (private schools get a grant equivalent to what a State school would get) and a rigid division into academic and vocational education systems from 15 onwards.

Also considered one of the best education systems in the world. - Tim Worstall

I'm not sure if Finland's experience with vouchers would translate here. I reckon with our obsession with performance measures, the best private schools would cherry-pick students, vouchers would suck away money from the public schools -- so public schools would be left with more difficult students and less money (kinda like what goes wrong with our private system of health insurance and then having Medicaid as a safety net).

I have relatives in Finland. One of my cousins has Asperger's syndrome (mild, autism spectrum disorders run in the family): the public schools in Finland can't provide her with the resources she needs, so she's in a private school (Chabad run, actually). Could you imagine in the US a public school dumping a child with learning disabilities on a parochial school? It generally works the opposite way here.

As far as the issue of vocational training goes -- IMHO, we might take the wrong lesson from this. Actually, tracking kids too early exclusively into one or another track can have huge problems as some kids are late bloomers, some kids end up having huge issues of discipline and dedication to studies because they get put on the wrong track, etc. The key is not forcing kids into vocational tracks but making good vocational education a viable alternative

As a soon to be college professor, I should be shilling for the higher education industrial complex, but the truth is that college is not for everyone. Yet we fail to prepare kids for the workforce (and to know enough of the humanities, etc., to have a perspective on history, the human condition, etc., so that they are informed citizens in our democratic republic) -- and the kids we do manage to prepare the best (e.g. I was pretty well prepared by high school) are those who are the ones we don't need to prepare so well in some areas 'cause they will go to college.

And even if we did prepare kids out of high school, so many positions nowadays require a college degree (even if the job itself doesn't really require a college education to do) that kids would still need to be spending time and money in college anyway.

As our working lifespans get longer, perhaps we do need to delay kids from entering into the workforce in order to keep room for increasing numbers of more mature adults in the workforce, but it seems that we rely too much on college as a credentialing and waiting station when better vocational education (and a more solid high school education in general) could do a better job of preparing many kids for the workforce.

We need not force kids into one or another track too young, but we absolutely must have those tracks available and have jobs available for kids who take the vocational track rather than having all positions require more education than is needed for the job at hand.

Unfortunately -- something tells me we'll learn the wrong lessons from the Finnish system (if we learn anything at all).

Posted by DAS | July 23, 2008 10:34 AM

Re Joshua Whelan

There is no private school anywhere in the world that has a record comparable to the Bronx School of Science, e.g. 6 graduates are Nobel Prize winners in physics.

Posted by SLC | July 23, 2008 10:49 AM

6 graduates are Nobel Prize winners in physics

The similar things could be said about CCNY. I don't hear people explaining how it's better than Havard and Princeton.

Posted by Tyro | July 23, 2008 11:15 AM

The similar things could be said about CCNY. I don't hear people explaining how it's better than Havard and Princeton.

Back in the day (the days when the Ivy League was chracterized by Jewish quotas and the Gentleman's C) it actually was better, and people say so all the time.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | July 23, 2008 11:51 AM

They've a version of vouchers (private schools get a grant equivalent to what a State school would get)

It's a bit misleading using the term "private schools" in the Anglo sense, because they aren't like that. Think of them as state-sponsored comprehensives, because that's what they are

Posted by Suvi | July 23, 2008 12:26 PM

They've a version of vouchers (private schools get a grant equivalent to what a State school would get)

It's a bit misleading using the term "private schools" in the Anglo sense, because they aren't like that. Think of them as state-sponsored comprehensives, because that's what they are

Posted by Suvi | July 23, 2008 12:29 PM

They've a version of vouchers (private schools get a grant equivalent to what a State school would get)

It's a bit misleading using the term "private schools" in the Anglo sense, because they aren't like that. Think of them as state-sponsored comprehensives, because that's what they are

Posted by Suvi | July 23, 2008 12:32 PM

Sorry for the repetitions - I kept getting server error messages and thought I had to re-post

Posted by Suvi | July 23, 2008 12:41 PM

What can't Social Democracy do? Apparently nothing.

But Finnish culture via the agent of Finish parents and not Social Democracy is what makes Finnish kids so well educated.

Other social democracies don't do the same.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/04/education_in_fi.html

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/011747.html

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/32/0/37393408.pdf

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/06/26102419/2

Single payer health care is not going to improve education in the US. Social Democracy is not the answer.

The US spends 9000 per kid and Finland something like 5 - 6,000.

The Finnish example is a model for sceptics of educational spending, since culture, and not spending is what really matters.

Posted by someguy | July 23, 2008 1:41 PM

The reason the Finland does well is because its full of Finns.

Put 800,000 inner city blacks and a 10,000 left-wing New York "educators" in Helsinki and see what happens.

Posted by pablo H | July 23, 2008 7:13 PM

>>Re Joshua Whelan
>>
>>There is no private school anywhere in the world >>that has a record comparable to the Bronx School >>of Science, e.g. 6 graduates are Nobel Prize >>winners in physics.

Well, I wasn't suggesting that. It is, however, worthy of note that Bronx Science, Stuyvesant High School, and Brooklyn Tech all have private endowments in addition to their NYC dept. of Education financing, as well as subsidies from private corporations, private sponsorships, lucrative alumni associations, and were all originally private schools that were deeded to the city of ny on very strict terms concerning financing, admissions, etc... My argument isn't that private schools were somehow inherently superior, although I doubt you'd have found Dr. Helen Caldicott (my 8th grade biology teacher at St. Anne's) putting up with the hell of NYC's education dept (My Mom was a UFT member and NYC public school kindergarten teacher at P.S.183 in Brooklyn, btw, and several of my current friends teach in NYC public schools today), where you can find yourself confined to the "rubber room", a disciplinary unit, for doing too good of a job of teaching, for years at a time. They may not be allowed to fire you, but they sure can make you want to quit.
The real problem is funding priorities. We spend $.50 on the tax dollar on the military, and not even pennies on the dollar on public education. We set no meaningful national standards, allow science text books to have their content determined by religious groups (ironically, you're more likely to find intelligent design at Dewey than at St. Anne's, which taught a rigidly secular humanist curriculum. You'd get laughed out of the school for even mentioning it in anything but satirical terms, where as at Dewey you'd have to spend weeks debating about it, and, oh, I could go on. We have lousy public education because our goal is mediocrity. Your argument vis-a-vis Bronx Sci, et al is proof of my point. At these few precious schools where the city is forced by terms of an endowment to pursue excellence, it succeeds famously. The problem is it, it doesn't seek excellence unless forced to by an outside funding agency.

Posted by Joshua Whalen | July 29, 2008 12:15 PM

>>Re Joshua Whelan
>>
>>There is no private school anywhere in the world >>that has a record comparable to the Bronx School >>of Science, e.g. 6 graduates are Nobel Prize >>winners in physics.

Well, I wasn't suggesting that. It is, however, worthy of note that Bronx Science, Stuyvesant High School, and Brooklyn Tech all have private endowments in addition to their NYC dept. of Education financing, as well as subsidies from private corporations, private sponsorships, lucrative alumni associations, and were all originally private schools that were deeded to the city of ny on very strict terms concerning financing, admissions, etc... My argument isn't that private schools were somehow inherently superior, although I doubt you'd have found Dr. Helen Caldicott (my 8th grade biology teacher at St. Anne's) putting up with the hell of NYC's education dept (My Mom was a UFT member and NYC public school kindergarten teacher at P.S.183 in Brooklyn, btw, and several of my current friends teach in NYC public schools today), where you can find yourself confined to the "rubber room", a disciplinary unit, for doing too good of a job of teaching, for years at a time. They may not be allowed to fire you, but they sure can make you want to quit.
The real problem is funding priorities. We spend $.50 on the tax dollar on the military, and not even pennies on the dollar on public education. We set no meaningful national standards, allow science text books to have their content determined by religious groups (ironically, you're more likely to find intelligent design at Dewey than at St. Anne's, which taught a rigidly secular humanist curriculum. You'd get laughed out of the school for even mentioning it in anything but satirical terms, where as at Dewey you'd have to spend weeks debating about it, and, oh, I could go on. We have lousy public education because our goal is mediocrity. Your argument vis-a-vis Bronx Sci, et al is proof of my point. At these few precious schools where the city is forced by terms of an endowment to pursue excellence, it succeeds famously. The problem is it, it doesn't seek excellence unless forced to by an outside funding agency.

Posted by Joshua Whalen | July 29, 2008 12:18 PM

>>Re Joshua Whelan
>>
>>There is no private school anywhere in the world >>that has a record comparable to the Bronx School >>of Science, e.g. 6 graduates are Nobel Prize >>winners in physics.

Well, I wasn't suggesting that. It is, however, worthy of note that Bronx Science, Stuyvesant High School, and Brooklyn Tech all have private endowments in addition to their NYC dept. of Education financing, as well as subsidies from private corporations, private sponsorships, lucrative alumni associations, and were all originally private schools that were deeded to the city of ny on very strict terms concerning financing, admissions, etc... My argument isn't that private schools were somehow inherently superior, although I doubt you'd have found Dr. Helen Caldicott (my 8th grade biology teacher at St. Anne's) putting up with the hell of NYC's education dept (My Mom was a UFT member and NYC public school kindergarten teacher at P.S.183 in Brooklyn, btw, and several of my current friends teach in NYC public schools today), where you can find yourself confined to the "rubber room", a disciplinary unit, for doing too good of a job of teaching, for years at a time. They may not be allowed to fire you, but they sure can make you want to quit.
The real problem is funding priorities. We spend $.50 on the tax dollar on the military, and not even pennies on the dollar on public education. We set no meaningful national standards, allow science text books to have their content determined by religious groups (ironically, you're more likely to find intelligent design at Dewey than at St. Anne's, which taught a rigidly secular humanist curriculum. You'd get laughed out of the school for even mentioning it in anything but satirical terms, where as at Dewey you'd have to spend weeks debating about it, and, oh, I could go on. We have lousy public education because our goal is mediocrity. Your argument vis-a-vis Bronx Sci, et al is proof of my point. At these few precious schools where the city is forced by terms of an endowment to pursue excellence, it succeeds famously. The problem is it, it doesn't seek excellence unless forced to by an outside funding agency.

Posted by Joshua Whalen | July 29, 2008 12:22 PM